


Not Kansas, And Not Kentucky Either

by SimplexityJane



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Families of Choice, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternately: Things Steve Rogers Learned About After Being De-Thawed in 2011. </p><p>To be fair, Steve knew a few of these things before 2011, before the War even. Sometimes, though, learning is about expanding knowledge, not just gaining it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Kansas, And Not Kentucky Either

**Google**

They assigned him an agent (Agent Cole, twenty-nine, had a masters in political science and raven black hair in dozens of braids he wanted to _draw_ ) to teach him about the future, what he didn’t already know.

(He’d figured out Google after fifteen minutes, especially with the printed chart of search terms. He’d looked up wars, expecting to find a few. The first thing he’d read about had been the Manhattan Project, and he’d lost his lunch. He imagined what Morita would have said about it, about civilians dying, and he read about Truman and the Cold War. It didn’t help, knowing the real reason behind those bombs.

Steve hated bullies, even American ones. When he read about the reactions of people to the bombings, the utter lack of regard for people who weren’t Americans, he pulled the trash can in his SHIELD assigned room close to him, and left an indent in the metal in the shape of a hand. He had spent fourteen hours straight on that computer, the images of the war drowned out of his head by the countless atrocities that had been committed since. Not always by America, but too many times for his heart to ever stop hurting.)

“Ma’am, I don’t think it’s necessary,” he tried to tell her. She just looked at him, almost—distraught. Somehow he inspired that in grown women now. “Not that I think you’d do a bad job, obviously, but I’ve been doing pretty well with Google.” He had spent Sunday, a day he should have been at church (Sister Thomas would have rapped his knuckles _so_ hard if she’d known.), trying to catch up on all the technological advances he’d missed. He liked the Internet, even if the thing called Skynet might be coming for them all. He was pretty sure that was fake, though. He had read a lot about “discernment” when it came to online articles, so he had sort of been paranoid when he found out that polio had been eliminated. It wasn’t fake, though, and went into a book he’d started keeping when the atrocities became too much and he needed to remind himself that the future was _good_ too.

The agent’s eyes lit up.

“Oh thank God,” she said, and he couldn’t help but laugh. She had seemed so stern at first, presenting him with a manila envelope filled with potential topics and making stilted conversation. This was better, like she was human. Then she eyed him. “You know that not _everything_ on the Internet is real, right?”

“Yes ma’am, I know. I always fact check my sources.” Those words hadn’t even been in his vocabulary until a few days ago. He looked down at the topic list, confused. “I thought space travel was extremely limited?” he asked. “How were there wars in them? I didn’t see that on the timeline.”

For a moment the agent looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.

“Cultural shifts in the media it is, then,” she said.

**Star Wars**

There had been no wars in space.

Steve would be lying if he pretended that didn’t disappoint him a little. He’d grown up with— _speculative_ fiction, not science fiction, it was a much broader genre. They called the time he’d grown up in the Golden Age of Science Fiction (he really needed to figure out what the real difference between sci-fi and speculative fiction were, if he was going to stop getting confused by people, especially Agent Cole, using them interchangeably). Apparently some of that fiction was “problematic”, which Steve was coming to understand could mean a variety of things, all of them rude to other people.

“I like Octavia Butler,” he told Agent Cole, who had given him a few anthologies to look through instead of “Downloading viruses, dammit Steve, what did you _do_?” because his computer was broken.

He hadn’t even hit it.

**The Red Scare**

When Cole introduced him to McCarthyism (which he’d skimmed over, more focused on the actual wars instead of ones where there were no real soldiers, no real battles), Steve stared at her for a whole minute before blurting out, “What the hell _happened_ to this country?”

She didn’t miss a beat.

“Well, we made an atomic weapon, the USSR started making their own, it became an arms race, and in order to further the ‘American way’ we targeted their system of government instead of actually talking about what problems we had with them, namely that they might bomb us like we bombed other people. They did something similar, and over the years the fear grew as spies from both countries infiltrated the other and several people defected from both sides. Cuba became a communist dictatorship and was ninety miles away from us, and other countries joined the USSR. There was an incident where the USSR wanted to place nuclear missiles on Cuba, and we almost started World War Three. People panicked.”

Steve looked up, but only the ceiling greeted him. He wished he knew a priest who could deal with his particular problem, because otherwise confession was going to be so awkward.

“You know I’m a New Deal Democrat, right?” he asked. He had found that particular term on a forum, and he hoped it was accurate. “You haven’t treated me differently, it seems, but some people keep looking at me like I’m going to harangue them for cursing. I’m from Brooklyn. I’ve heard modern people. _It hasn’t changed that much._ ” More women cursed, definitely, but that was the only real difference he’d found.

“I figured that out when you ranted at me for half an hour about McDonald’s,” she said. Steve scowled, thinking about what he’d read about the place called Wal*Mart that was everywhere. Picket lines were _important_. Hell, they had barely gotten around to having minimum wage when he went off to the war, and that saved their _lives_ a few times. “Come on, I have a copy of _The Crucible_ in my office. It’s pretty much McCarthyism, but it’s set during the Salem Witch Trials.”

**LGBTQIAP+—GSRM-- Quiltbag, that's cute!  
**

“So, my girlfriend and I are getting married,” Cole said. “For our next meeting, should I come in or find someone else to teach you?” Her hands were shaking around the cup of coffee that he’d bought for her on one of the field trips that they’d been taking, now that New York was no longer in danger of just falling apart. Pepper Potts usually went with them; she’d recommended he buy the cup (it had his shield on it, all proceeds from sales went towards cleanup).

Steve was struck suddenly by the memory of a very similar conversation he’d had with Bucky, after he’d accidentally caught him in an alleyway with another man. Bucky had yelled at him and almost cried. Cole looked like she was close to it.

“What, you’re not gonna invite me?” he asked, and she looked up suddenly, black eyes wide. “I mean, I know I’m work, and taking work home with you isn’t a great idea, but I thought you liked me at least a little.” He grinned and she huffed a laugh.

“You are very different from what I’d have expected out of you, Steve Rogers,” she said, drinking her coffee with shaking hands. “And you probably needed to get to this part of history anyway. I’ll send you some PDFs on sexuality for you to read—probably need to send you some on gender too,” she mused. “The wedding is Monday afternoon, at our church. We’re Presbyterian. You _will_ need a suit.” She glared at him. “Do _not_ bring Stark to my wedding. Potts yes, Stark no.”

He read through one of the PDFs while getting fitted for a suit (he’d needed one anyway, he reasoned, and it wasn’t too expensive for the future). There wasn’t a section on gay marriage, but he figured he could find one on the internet if he wanted to, and since Tony had installed a new anti-virus program on his tablet he wouldn’t even be at risk for pornography popping up. He read about all the different types of sexualities, trying to figure out if he was wrong and bisexuality and pansexuality didn’t mean the same thing.

He wondered what Bucky would have thought about it. Maybe he wouldn’t have cared at all, since he’d been with girls most of the time.

When he read about asexuality, demisexuality, his heart skipped a beat. _Oh_ , he thought. _So_ that’s _what it is._

He didn’t cry, but he wanted to. He’d thought—it hadn’t been that he didn’t, didn’t feel things, didn’t think people were beautiful, but Peggy, Bucky, he hadn’t thought about why they were the exceptions, why all of his fantasies had been about _them_ , and only them. He’d never been close to people, too sick, too unattractive for them, and too much of an icon afterward. He’d never wanted anyone, not like he wanted Peggy, not like he’d wanted Bucky (as easy as breathing, too attached _not_ to want him that way, and no, he’d never believed it was a sin, not when he wasn’t defying his nature anyway).

Alisha looked beautiful as she walked down the aisle with her brother. She wore a red dress, not a white one, but it suited her. Her new wife Jill cried, and Steve drew the scene from memory while they were on their honeymoon. Pepper helped him remember some details while Tony heckled them in the background.

Jill cried again, and kissed his cheek.

“You keep surprising me, Steve,” Alisha said, and he grinned.

“Hopefully in a good way though,” he said, and she hugged him.

**Cell Phones**

He knew what cell phones were, okay? It was just that _Tony Stark’s_ phones were a little different.

“Look, Cap, I get that you think disappearing off the map is even possible, but seriously? Kentucky?”

Steve frowned at the screen, which had Tony’s face on it, and then at the delivery person who was standing there. He didn’t think they were supposed to _loom_.

Then again, he had sort of run away, and this guy looked like what Tony thought would be able to bring him down. He wasn’t going back, though, because that would be pathetic, and both Pepper and Tony were recuperating. They didn’t want them there.

That was possibly incorrect, considering the large deliveryman-probably-bodyguard.

“Tony, why are you calling me? Aren’t you supposed to be in Malibu? Resting? After you got _blown up_?” Pepper had called him after that _fiasco_ because she was responsible and Tony was not, and she had sounded fine, even while explaining that she might sometimes set things on fire, when he was there. He had wanted to go to her right then, but she had stopped him. It would have been strange for him to be there anyway.

Yep, it would have.

“Oh, I’m resting. In bed, with a beautiful red haired vixen, who is currently holding a fireball in what I can only assume is a playful manner. And we were wondering why the hell you’re in Kentucky when you could be here, since you’ve been seducing at least one of us since the—since last March.” Tony’s breath got heavier and Steve frowned. “So, the deliverer of this top-of-the-line, completely secret, not-even-on-the-market-yet phone also happens to be a pilot, and if you want, he’ll fly you here. If you want. If you don’t want, he will take you anywhere you wanna go, because Kentucky is no place for such a pretty guy as you are, Steve.”

Steve’s breath caught in his chest.

“Yes,” he blurted out, coughing as his face flamed red. At least Tony probably couldn’t see _that_. “Yes, I would like that. If, that’s, uh, okay with everyone else.” Alisha had been _very_ clear on polyamory, when he asked about it via email. She’d Skyped with him and Jill had laughed in the background (they were very happy, a year and a half post-New York; Alisha had transferred to the Boston office and they had a new puppy named Bowser) while they’d about full disclosure and talking and _Tony Stark, Steve? Potts I understand, she’s possibly a fallen angel and her heels are fantastic, but Stark?_

“Trust me, everyone is _very_ okay with this,” Tony said, and Steve’s face heated even further as the background noises got louder. “Unless you wanna make this phone sex, I think you should hang up and get your ass over here.”

“And I thought I was the Captain,” he said.

“We can talk about roleplay when you get here,” Pepper blurted into the receiver, presumably from Tony’s lap. “Come on, Steve, you drew me _naked_.” Her voice rose on the last word and Steve’s entire body went hot and cold.

The pilot looked away. Steve glared anyway. Pepper was a _classy dame_ , and what she did in the bedroom was classy too.

“Well, I’m going to—wherever they are,” he said. The pilot nodded, a sharp _yes sir_ out of his mouth before he led Steve to Tony’s private plane.

If he had to hide his giddy smile behind his fist, well, no one would know.

**Evil**

He’d always known evil _existed_ , of course. Since he was six years old and Betty Wilson had been—hurt, his mom had told him, by an evil man, and he had to go in his room because she had to do something to help her. Betty had been one of a few women who came to his mother before she died from TB, and they all went away pale and hurt, but less afraid. His mother had been a hero, had stared down evil and helped people anyway.

Bucky was a hero too. With Natasha with him in the recovery room, his arms and legs bound by chains as he thrashed with the memories that were coming in, he was the bravest person Steve had ever known. And what he was seeing, _that_ was evil Schmidt had never dreamt of.

Schmidt hadn’t been human, after all.

“Hey,” Pepper said, taking his hand. She technically wasn’t supposed to be at this level of the SHIELD facility, but she’d stared Fury down until he’d let her in, muttering about how people were trying to take advantage of his kindness while he was injured. Tony was somewhere with Bruce, because the clean-up took precedence over comforting Steve, who couldn’t help anyone in his condition.

Pepper’s abilities didn’t lend themselves to repair, so she was here. He squeezed her hand back lightly, with as little pressure as he could because he’d broken three doors today.

“The doctors say he should come out of this episode soon,” she offered, and he nodded. _Soon_ was a term they’d learned meant absolutely nothing. It had been almost eighteen hours straight of this, of Bucky screaming in English and Romanian and French and Russian, all about people dying. Blood, sang, кровь, sânge, they were all the same thing. Names, targets, even _prayers_ all came out, and Natasha sat next to him, grim faced and silent. She hadn’t moved even to sleep once.

He hadn’t either.

(A secret, one she’d told him when they were on the train looking for Bucky: they weren’t human either. Humans, people who hadn’t been through what they had, didn’t know what it meant to be changed, to be undone. They weren’t as strong as they were, and they were crueler for it.)

“Thank you for staying with me,” he said. “I know you’re busy.”

She rolled her eyes, pulling him close. She was as strong as he was now.

“I’m not going to explain how wrong that is, Steve. I love you and you’re hurting, so I’m going to help you as much as I can.” Steve leaned further in, so his head rested on her bony shoulder. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was comforting, hearing her heartbeat, her skin actually warm when most people felt cold.

“I love you,” he said. He hadn’t said it as much as he maybe should have, especially lately. Tony had decided to modify the _Extremis_ _virus_ so that he could connect to any computer in the world. It had helped with his heart, yes, but it had been so incredibly stupid that Steve had seriously considered moving out of the Mansion and losing half, possibly all, of the most stable relationship he’d ever had.

“We’ll get him back for you. Tony can, even if these people can’t,” Pepper said, and the blocky weight that had rested on Steve’s heart lightened slightly. Maybe if they had to they would bring Tony in, with some miracle machine. Maybe they wouldn’t need to.

He closed his eyes and prayed.

**Family of choice**

“Clint, if you don’t give me that right now I am going to strangle you!” Natasha yelled. Steve sipped his coffee, reading three newspapers on his StarkPad. Maybe he would get the actual news out of at least one of them. If nothing else it was _entertainment_ , all these different stories that were almost always false.

“Not if you don’t have your special garrote, you won’t,” Clint sang from somewhere in the ceiling. Steve sighed.

“Hawkeye, we still haven’t cleared the house of all the asbestos. So unless you’d like to die of a brutal cancer, please come down.”

There was silence, then a sudden thump, and Natasha’s cackle. She’d been doing that more lately, probably because she and Bucky were having a lot of very loud sex wherever they could. Steve would complain, but he had been having his fair share of sex, and a few times people had actually interrupted them to complain about the noise.

That hadn’t been fun.

“Coffee,” Tony grumbled, staggering into the kitchen. He’d been in the lab for over twenty hours, working on some revolutionary invention with a scientist named Hank Pym. Steve hadn’t met the man, but he was apparently a genius, and even Pepper hadn’t had bad things to say about him (Steve did, but that was solely for making Tony act and look like the zombies they’d had to fight last week).

“No,” Bruce said, steering Tony to the island. “Food, then sleep, _then_ coffee.” He was drinking tea and eating tofu scramble, which was actually pretty tasty, once Steve had gotten past the texture.

Tony turned a pathetic look on Steve, who shook his head.

“No coffee after forty hours awake,” he said. “Pepper’s rule, remember?”

Tony scowled.

“So, is Thor going to be here today? Because if so, I have plans.” Bruce sipped tea and stared Steve down serenely.

“No, he and Jane are going to—I think Belgium. Something about chocolate.” Steve shrugged.

Bucky came through the kitchen carrying a limp Hawkeye like a sack of potatoes.

“No, you can’t have him,” Coulson said, and his suit was pressed perfectly even this early in the morning. (It was almost ten, Steve was clearly getting soft). “Take him to his quarters.”

 Bucky winked at Steve, whistling.

“You know, male spiders will usually bring the females food as an offering before mating,” Bruce mused, and Bucky flipped him off. There was something weird going on between those three, but Steve hadn’t asked.

Steve’s phone rang, Alisha calling for their daily talk about the movie he’d seen with the team (the picture on the screen was of Jill’s baby bump, which was a little outdated but still very sentimental for Steve, who had cried when Jill pronounced the dark haired baby _Stephanie Regina Cole_ ). He was still a little slow on the uptake with slang and the way people incorporated it into their lives, especially regarding movies. Really though, he thought the calls were as much an opportunity for her to gush, or bitch, or just talk at him, as an attempt to help him assimilate.

Something exploded in the background, shaking the walls slightly.

“Hey Alisha. No, I’m pretty sure that was just Natasha ruining Clint’s arrows, nothing serious. How’s Steph?”

On reflection, his life was pretty great. At least he wasn’t unconscious and probably having obscene things drawn on his face.

Tony took pictures.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about Steve learning about technology, and it blew up from there.
> 
> Edit: I have beta-ed this myself, and added in a couple things that help the flow. Enjoy!
> 
> PS: WRT the section on Evil, there was no back-alley surgery involved. It was a pill, and the girls stayed over because inducing a miscarriage can cause problems. Abortion-inducing pills have actually been around for a long time.


End file.
